President of E! Entertainment Adam Stotsky, left, and TV host Catt Sadler attend the ELLE, E! and IMG New York Fashion Week kick-off party in New York on Sept. 6, 2017. Donald Traill/Invision/AP Photo

Catt Sadler, a long-time co-host of “E! News,” left the company on Tuesday, citing the ever-present, ever-frustrating gender wage gap.

Sadler recently learned that her male co-host, Jason Kennedy,was being paid nearly double what she had been earning for the last several years.After fruitless contract negotiations with the company, Sadler decided to leave the network. She had been there for 12 years.

Sadler learned that there was a discrepancy from an executive at E! Entertainment early in 2017. She thought the company would be willing to correct the issue when her contract came back up for negotiation, especially since she had taken on more responsibilities at the station over the last year.

“I inherited a lot more work and several more work hours, andI did all of that all year long without a single extra dime,” she said in a statement to theNew York Times. “I did that in good faith because I’m a team player and I wanted both shows to succeed. I trusted that, come time to renegotiate, I would be compensated fairly for all of that work moving forward.”

Kennedy currently hosts five segments of “E! News” a week, plus the show titled “Live From the Red Carpet” which runs only a handful of times a year before the major awards shows.

Sadler, just before she left the company, was co-hosting seven shows a week — and that wasaftercutting back from the 10 she hosted for several months. At one point, she was hosting “Daily Pop” (a live two-hour show) five days a week while also hosting “E! News” most nights.

The company denied the allegation that it paid Sadler less because she is a woman,sayingthat it pays employees “fairly and appropriately based on their roles, regardless of gender.”

Either way, it’s going to take time and it’s going to take work. It’s going to require people stepping up to shed light on the issue.

“[W]ithout our voices, how will we invoke lasting change?” Sadler questions onher website. “How can we make it better for the next generation of girls if we do not stand for what is fair and just today?”